Investor Pete Correll misses use of his corporate plane

Note to readers: It’s been a busy day, and several posts will follow. This item had to be cut from my next Atlanta Business Chronicle column, but I thought y’all might enjoy reading it.

Atlanta was the site of M&A International’s spring conference, bringing dozens of merger and acquisition specialists from around the world to the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead on April 16.

The event — Growing Opportunities in a Shrinking World — was co-sponsored by the Atlanta Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth.

The conference kicked off with a talk by Pete Correll, retired CEO of Georgia-Pacific who is now chairman of Atlanta Equity Group, a group of local investors.

“We are a strange lot,” Correll said. “There’s me, an old corporate geek, who is out of date on 90 percent of the issues but having a sure opinion oon 100 percent of the issues.”

Correll said that the Atlanta Equity Group is focusing on opportunities in the Southeast, primarily in the metro area.

“They took away my corporate plane,” Correll explained. “That’s the biggest shock of ceasing to be a CEO, getting on a commercial aircraft. I’ve learned it’s simply not fun.”

So his group is not interested in investment opportunities “if you can’t get there within an hour of Atlanta.”